1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to a deep fat frying apparatus having a frypot assembly with improved heat transfer surfaces for absorbing heat from burner combustion gases and a forced air supercharged burner system for increasing the heat input to the frypot.
2. Background
In the art of frying apparatus comprising a vat or frypot in which a quantity of cooking oil is heated for so called deep fat frying, there are several problems which are of longstanding, particularly, with respect to apparatus used for commercial cooking operations. Deep fat frying apparatus used in restaurants, including so called fast food dispensers, must be capable of rapid warmup time, a uniform temperature of the cooking oil, and maintenance of the cooking oil at a desired temperature when relatively large loads of raw foodstuffs are placed in the frypot. The ever increasing cost of hydrocarbon fuels such as natural gas and liquified petroleum gases has also placed high emphasis on improving the thermal efficiency of commercial cooking apparatus which use relatively large amounts of these fuels.
Although various designs of cooking vats or so called frypots have been developed in an effort to improve the rate of heating the cooking oil and to improve the distribution of heat to maintain a uniform temperature of the oil, the emphasis on the fast preparation of fast food wherein relatively large quantities of frozen foodstuffs are cooked rapidly has caused several problems in the development of deep fat fryers. In this regard, it has been deemed desirable to provide for increasing the heating capacity of the burner systems for fryers so that relatively large quantities of foods may be cooked in a relatively short time period and with proper control of the oil temperature to provide palatable foods cooked by this type of apparatus.
Along with the requirements for increased heating capacity of deep fat frying apparatus, the rapidly escalating cost of heating fuel has also made it highly desirable to increase the thermal efficiency of extracting the heat from the combustion gases to reduce fuel usage as much as possible. In this regard, the present invention provides several improved features in deep fat frying apparatus of the type wherein a frypot or vat is heated by a gas flame or gaseous combustion system. The abovementioned desiderata in the art of deep fat frying apparatus have been realized with an apparatus having a supercharged or forced air combustion system and improved structure for heat transfer from the combustion gases to the cooking oil contained in the frypot.